I'm Not Dead

[ C H . 2 2 ]

Darkness engulfed us as the headlights of the dump truck faded away and the forest floor crunched beneath our feet. Rapidly, our anxious breathing filled the empty night air. If it wasn't for the thick blanket of treetops, the last quarter moon might've allotted us some light, but the only thing we had to guide us were shadows. 

Behind us, I could hear the clumsy bodies of Jokers crashing through the trees as their soul-stirring snarls echoed between our panicked breaths. Reaching out, I felt around for Lorenzo in the dark. It took me a few tries but I managed to get a firm grip on his sleeve. "We need to head back towards the road!" I insisted, pulling him towards me, before realizing that I had accidentally grabbed the arm of a Joker.

Gurgling, his jaw snapped at my arm, missing my flesh by a fraction of an inch. Shoving him away from me, I felt panic seep through me as I veered towards the right. Only then did I find Lorenzo because I stumbled into him. Panicked, he took a swing at me that struck my shoulder, nearly throwing me off balance towards the ground.

"Stop! It's me!" I yelled, managing to grab his wrist before he hit me again.

"What the hell are you shoving me for?" He snapped as the outline of his body became more visible in my adjusting eyesight.

"I wasn't pushing you, I tripped!" I snapped back, shoving him for real this time out of petty frustration.

"Try tripping in a different direction then!"

Feeling my anger swell, my frontal lobe fought against the twitch in my limbs to hit him again. I despised him for bringing up Luna and Gabe but I don't think I could forgive him for calling my daughter's death a bump in the road. 

Losing my child had devasted depths of my mind, body, and soul that no one could repair. The memory of her in my arms was a bittersweet one of guilt, longing, and suffocating failure. I haven't said her name since she died. I couldn't. It made her lack of existence all the more real. Her death wasn't a bump in the road, it was a never-ending black hole of misery and finding a way to accept it. It was the only loss that could hurt me more than the void I felt for my mother right now. 

Lorenzo had no right to—

"Watch out!"

At the resonation of his voice, I broke out of my reflective fog seconds before the skin below my knees hit a fallen entanglement of branches. The impact sent me spiraling onto the forest floor. The shock of my upper body hitting the ground rattled me, as did the taste of dirt. On a better day, it would've been a hilarious fall, but today it only increased the intensity of my frustration.

"Fuck Lorenzo! You couldn't have said something sooner?" I gasped, spitting out the dirt.

"I'm sorry I wasn't born with night vision, maybe we can go back to the CDC and ask the Scientists to fix that!" He shot back, grabbing my elbow before pulling me up. As quickly as his voice came out harsh though, it was reduced to a squeak of terror. "Roc, look."

Glancing around us, I didn't see what he was referring to at first, but then the eerie glow of white eyes became clear through the darkness as the Jokers stared at us in a circular formation. The group of Jokers that were chasing us had surrounded us but they weren't attacking. Instead, I saw their heads drift side to side as they drew in sharp intakes of breath.

Spreading my fingers out, I slowly drifted my palm over the forest floor until I felt one of the branches I had tripped over in my grasp. "Why aren't they attacking?" I whispered, feeling the incessant need to be quiet.

Wheezing for a proper breath, Lorenzo looked carefully at the Jokers. With each passing second, the strength of his grip on me grew. "I...I don't know."